The Bobcat Nation

I also posted this over on efriz, I am interested to hear some of your thoughts. I couldn't decide which forum I wanted to post this, but I think the conversation may go far beyond bobcat athletics with this one.

Montana, Class, Major
Dustin Dlouhy, Sophomore, Business
Jason Frink, Junior, Biology
Jefferson Heidelberger, Senior, Business
Tyler Joyce, Freshman, General Studies
Matt Lebsock, Sophomore, Political Science
Jeff Marshall, Sophomore, Business
Shane MacIntyre, Junior, Biology/Pre-Med
Mike Murphy, Sophomore, Business
Craig Ochs, Senior, Political Science
Brad Rhoades, Junior, Business
Kyle Ryan, Freshman, Business
Kelly Kain, Freshman, Pre-Pharmacy
Tate Hancock, Senior, Business
Torrey Thomas, Freshman, General Studies
Tyler Thomas, Junior, Business Education
Loren Utterback, Freshman, Pre-Pharmacy

Montana State, Class, Major
Elliott Barnhart, Freshman, Microbiology
Brent Birkeland, Sophomore, Earth Sciences
EJ Cochrane, Senior, Earth Sciences
Clayton Curley, Junior, Health Enhancement
Brandon Eggart, Senior, Exercise Science
Ryan Force, Sophomore, Business
Travis Lulay, Junior, Business
Matt McCullough, Senior, Business
Ty McDonald, Sophomore, Ag Business
Mike McGuinness, Junior, Political Science
Blake Wolf, Senior, Ag Business
Zach Wolf, Junior, Business

Congratulations to these 28 student athletes representing the Montana Schools on the big sky conference all-academic team, but does anyone see anything missing? I know that I might get blasted for this, but it's a little disturbing to me (I'm not sure why) that there isn't a single African American on the list. Should this bother me, is there anything that needs to change?

I'll throw out a theory that may or may not have any validity at all. When schools recruit student-athletes, I think a fair amount of emphasis is placed on the potential recruit's academic background. This is important for the school (so they can brag that their athletes are smart) and also for more pragmatic reasons (because smart students are less likely to flunk out).

Since the Montana schools generally have the first shot (or are at least high in the pecking order) at the Montana and neighboring state recruits, they are going to be more likely to cherry pick the best athletes who happen to be the best students as well. As a result, you probably see a disproportionate number of local recruits that make academic teams. These students (as we all know the demographics of Montana and the surrounding state) tend to be white.

Conversely, a lot of the out of state (higher proportion of African Americans) recruits are the guys who were passed over by their own local schools, often because of things like grades. You'd probably see a lot of African Americans making academic teams for USC and UCLA, but those SoCal kids that end up in the BSC would be much less likely to do so.

There are also certainly areas that are predominately black where the high schools basically just suck, so the students coming out of those areas aren't nearly as prepared as those of us who were lucky enough to attend decent schools.

All that said, I hope this trend that you noted does change. If it doesn't, it feels a bit too much like we are bringing guys in just to be football players and not good students. That's certainly not a message that I hope continues.

Exactly half of the players are from the state of Montana. 6 out of 12 for the Cats, and 8 of 16 for the griz.